On the Cannes Croisette, in the foyer of the postmodern JW Marriott hotel, a bundle of brightly polished people from the film industry are standing together in a roped-off area, enjoying a free drink and the illusion of celebrity. Slinking by unnoticed, trundling a small case towards the lifts, is a tall man in a hoodie, with messy hair and stubble.
Is he a TV cameraman or a seedy showbiz journalist? No, it is Chris O'Dowd, one of the most bankable stars to attend the film festival that year, 2012.
No matter how famous the Irish actor gets, following lead roles in Bridesmaids and The Sapphires (along with a disturbing television cameo in the acclaimed HBO series Girls), his ambling, relaxed demeanour will somehow ensure him a degree of anonymity. Even if his imminent theatrical debut on Broadway in a new production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men makes O'Dowd the toast of Sardi's restaurant this spring, chances are he will still use the subway without causing a stir.
Working on the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd seems to have fire-proofed the actor against the pretensions of the VIP lifestyle. In that show, written by Graham Linehan, he helped build up a devoted audience playing the lazy geek Roy Trenneman.
Since the IT Crowd first aired eight years ago O'Dowd's co-star Richard Ayoade has also spread his wings to become a significant player in the film industry. Ayoade directed a well-received adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's dark novel Submarine and then moved on to Dostoevsky's The Double, out later this year, in which O'Dowd had the part of a nurse.
The Irishman feels "so proud" of Ayoade's "genius", he has said, displaying the proprietorial, family feeling engendered by their time together on the set.
While Ayoade started out as a comic, performing as a Cambridge student in Edinburgh fringe shows, O'Dowd has never been a comedian. He did, though, first come to the notice of film critics when he managed a convincing portrayal of an ambitious standup in the accomplished 2005 film Festival. He won a Scottish Bafta for his trouble.
O'Dowd, 34, was born in Boyle, County Roscommon, the youngest of five children and gained attention as a teenage goalkeeper on the Gaelic football pitch rather than on stage. His mother was a psychotherapist and his father a graphic designer with a musical bent. After an abortive run at a politics and sociology degree at University College Dublin he capitalised on the fun he had in the university dramsoc and won roles in Irish television shows. He turned his back on a future in his dad's firm or in Roscommon's fish factories, but he does remain closely linked to his childhood turf, tweeting recently: "Big shout out to Garda James McCann for kindly helping my Dad with a blown tyre on the motorway. You're an officer & a gentleman. Literally."
His hometown also features in Moone Boy, the Emmy-winning series he co-wrote and starred in for Sky 1 about a bullied child with an imaginary friend. More impressively still, an O'Dowd script was at the centre of a bidding war in 2011. Big Men, his comedy set in weight loss clinic was eventually snapped up by NBC.
The actor was seen on BBC2 last year in the improvisational comedy Family Tree, created by the comic film maker Christopher Guest, best known for Spinal Tap. O'Dowd starred as an Irishman tracing his American relatives and was assisted by a putative English sister, played by the ventriloquist Nina Conti.
"Chris is delightful to work with," Conti said this weekend. It is no surprise to her that he is in such demand. "Not only is Chris really good fun, but he does what he does so apparently effortlessly. He makes it look so easy, and in fact what he does on screen is actually really hard."
In 2012 O'Dowd married his girlfriend, the journalist and author Dawn Porter, who changed her name to Dawn O'Porter. Her new book, Goose, is out in April. "Going out with other actors is never good; actresses are neurotic, and actors are horrendous egotists," O'Dowd has explained.
When Bridesmaids became a huge hit in 2011, Porter expressed amusement at finding her scruffy comic-actor boyfriend newly anointed as an international sex symbol. O'Dowd himself quickly attributed his appeal to the part of Officer Rhodes, a policeman with a romantic devotion and an Irish brogue that could both have come from a fairytale.
"I know people are talking about the character, even if they're saying my name," said O'Dowd modestly of marriage proposals that poured in on Twitter. "I like to think that when people meet me in real life, they go off me immediately."
Smaller roles in Hollywood extravaganzas such as Thor and Gulliver's Travels have brought some financial relief for a man who has said he was not able to afford the cable TV bill to allow him to see his own appearance on Conan O'Brien's primetime American chat show.
Film parts from the hugely successful comedy machine run by producer Judd Apatow have followed in the shape of Friends With Kids, which teamed O'Dowd once more with Bridesmaids star Kirsten Wiig and Jon Hamm, and last year This is 40, a sequel to Apatow's hit, Knocked-Up. According to O'Dowd, Apatow had never heard of him but Bridesmaids director Paul Feig "was a big fan of The IT Crowd".
The April opening night for Of Mice and Men might mark a new chapter for an actor still most closely associated with comedy. Although O'Dowd played a straight role in the BBC period drama The Crimson Petal and the White, he will have to prove that he can do pathos in the genuinely iconic American role of Lennie Small, the intellectually limited itinerant ranch hand who wanders through the southwest of the Great Depression in the shadow of his friend George Milton, to be played by James Franco in this production.
He will have to show that he is more than a performer who can deliver a gag with great timing. His characterisation of the unpleasant Thomas John in Girls and his portrayal of the selfish comic Tommy O'Dwyer in Festival in 2005 both show he can deliver whatever a show needs. And just as it is tricky to categorise O'Dowd as a comic actor, it is also inaccurate to suggest that he keeps out of the limelight and avoids Hollywood partying just because he doesn't behave like a grand star. More than once the waiting staff at a film awards ceremony dinner have found the Irishman among the loudest and the latest guests to leave.
Chaotic bonhomie is the keynote for this star, and he habitually puts all his good career moves down to sheer good luck: "I've gone up for loads of jobs in the past that I knew were going to be terrible, and I've done my best, and I still haven't got them. So I think I've been lucky in who's decided I'd be worthy of their time," he has said .
